1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that enhance substantially the value and usefulness of various communication paradigms including, inter alia, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Session Initiation Protocol [SIP]—addressed communications, Electronic Mail (E-Mail), Instant Messaging (IM), etc.
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward through various flavors of 2G, 3G, 4G, and beyond, the importance to a Mobile Subscriber (MS)—for example a user of a Wireless Device (WD) that is serviced by possibly inter alia a Wireless Carrier (WC)—of their WD grows substantially. Examples of WDs include, inter alia, mobile telephones, handheld computers, Internet-enabled phones, pagers, radios, TVs, audio devices, car (audio, navigation, etc.) systems, recorders, text-to-speech devices, bar-code scanners, net appliances, mini-browsers, Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), etc.
One consequence of such a growing importance is the resulting ubiquitous nature of WDs—i.e., MSs have them available at almost all times and use them for an ever-increasing range of activities. For example, MSs employ their WDs to, possibly inter alia:
1) Exchange (e.g., SMS, MMS, etc.) messages, content (such as inter alia pictures and other static images; songs and other quanta of audio data; movies, streaming video, and other quanta of video data; data from software applications such as games), etc. with other MSs (e.g., “Let's meet for dinner at 6”, etc.) through Peer-to-Peer, or P2P, messaging.
2) Secure information (such as, for example, weather updates, travel alerts, news updates, sports scores, stock updates, etc.), participate in voting initiatives (such as, for example, with the television show American Idol®), exchange content (such as for example pictures and other static images; songs and other quanta of audio data; movies, streaming video, and other quanta of video data; games and other software applications; etc.), interact with social networking sites, etc. through various of the available Application-to-Peer, or A2P, based service offerings.
3) Engage in Mobile Commerce (which, broadly speaking, encompasses the buying and selling of products, goods, services, etc. through a WD) and Mobile Banking (which, broadly speaking, encompasses performing various banking activities through a WD).
The ubiquitous nature of WDs has among other things resulted in very high volumes of data traffic. As just one example, around the world during 2009 there were over five trillion SMS messages exchanged and in North America during just the first half of 2010 over one trillion SMS messages were exchanged.
Under normal circumstances all of the traffic flows through the mobile ecosystem without issue. However, perturbations do arise. For example, service interruptions, system outages, bursts of traffic (for example in response to a tele-voting initiative, from a mass broadcast of alert or information messages in response to a news item or an emergency situation, etc.), equipment failures, etc. can all result in a ‘pool’ of traffic (including inter alia SMS, MMS, IMS, etc. messages; SIP-addressed artifacts; application data; WAP-based exchanges; E-Mail messages; signaling, command-and-control, application, etc. data; IM messages; etc.) that needs to be bulk processed.
It would be desirable to have a way of efficiently managing such a pool of traffic, including inter alia a way of dynamically throttling the sending of the traffic in the pool, so as to among other things maximize a WD user's experience.
Aspects of the present invention fill the lacuna that was noted above by (1) providing (within inter alia a Messaging Inter-Carrier Vendor [MICV]) an intelligent dynamic throttling capability that can accommodate a wide range of information (including inter alia SMS, MMS, IMS, etc. messages; SIP-addressed artifacts; application data; WAP-based exchanges; E-Mail messages; signaling, command-and-control, application, etc. data; IM messages; etc.) while (2) addressing, in new and innovatory ways, various of the not insubstantial challenges that are associated with same.